Tag: writing

Playing with a Story Idea

By the way, we have a new project coming soon! A podcast! Maureen and I are recording it now and will be releasing it later this spring. We’re so excited! We’ll be announcing it here on the blog and on our newsletter, so sign up at the link at the bottom of this page if you haven’t, so you can stay in touch.

The Story Kitchen Podcast

Before I was a writer, I worked in the video game industry (and in fact Maureen and I met teaching in a games program at a university!)

One of the things I learned from working in games is an attitude of playfulness towards my creative work. To me, this is related to the ideas of rapid prototyping and the “fail fast” mantra. It kind of forces you to not take your work too seriously.

How I apply that to writing is, as Maureen wrote last week, just try it! But for me, I don’t necessarily need to *write it* to try it. I do a lot of, I guess you could say, daydreaming. I think about the story, I ask myself questions about it (usually questions like, what if this happens? Who’s the protagonist? Why do I like this idea?) I’ll watch or read media that reminds me of the idea I have, either in tone or theme or plot points. And sometimes I just take a walk and talk about the idea out loud to myself.

At some point, of course, I go to the page and write. At this stage I try not to let my editor inside my writing room. (You know, the one who says things like, “This is a stupid idea. What is this even about? This makes no sense.” No time for that, keep her out of the room!)

I write down whatever little bits I have. I really like timed writing for this — I set a timer for five minutes, or ten minutes, and just write while thinking about the idea. At the end of that time, if I feel like it, I keep going. If not, I save the file (or the notebook — I’m a big fan of writing out ideas at this early stage in longhand) and save it for later.

I’m a big advocate of writing down random bits of ideas, by the way! You never know when that random bit will spark off another random bit! Keep a notebook around so you can scribble these stray thoughts and observations.

Sometimes an idea is so interesting and so exciting to me that it kind of takes over for a while. When that happens, I try to chase it. If it’s a short story, I try to get a draft down in one sitting. Or at least, get to an idea of what the ending is. (Endings are the hardest part for me.) If the idea starts looking like a novel-sized idea, I do what Maureen does, I just start writing for a while, and then I look back at what I’m writing, and start asking myself questions about it:

  • Who’s the protagonist, what does she want? What’s the worst thing that could happen to her?
  • What’s the theme of this? (It’s totally okay if you don’t know that — themes often emerge much later.)
  • Why am I interested in this story? What about it is exciting? What kinds of scenes would I be excited to write?
  • What are some exciting things that could happen in this story?
  • How could this story end?

Give yourself permission to play in the story world for while! Play with your characters, get to know them. Play with the setting, start getting a feeling for its mood, its tone, its geography. Keep writing as you go. Chase those stray moments of glee, indulge your curiosity.

And have fun!

P.S. Do you want to try playing with a story idea in a guided way? I’m running a short story clinic in June, Story from Beginning to End, in which we’ll write a story in one weekend! Check out link for more details.

I Have an Idea, How Do I Start?

A lot of the things on this blog are geared towards people who have been writing long enough to have questions about technique.  That said, I often teach people who are not writers.  I’ve taught everything from MFA workshops to intro classes.  I teach a class in developing stories for interactive forms like video games and Augmented Reality and the class ranges from people who have a degree in writing to people who have computer science degrees and no interest in writing.  I try to make writing lessons that are flexible enough to teach something no matter what your skill level is.

This question is a hard one for me and yet I see it a lot.  How you start is such a hard question to answer because I don’t really know where you are starting from.

Do you outline your idea or just write?

Even if I did know where you were starting from, how anyone starts is different from person to person and from style of writing to style of writing.  For example, if I’m doing a project for hire, I do a high level outline, then a comprehensive outline.  Then I write the project, often changing the outline and consulting with whoever hired me.

When I write a short story, I just write it.  I don’t outline at all.  Most people I know don’t outline a short story, but there are people who do, and there are people who, say, jot down a phrase for the beginning, a phrase for what they want to do in the middle, a phrase for the ending.  I would recommend writing a short story without an outline, but outlining is not wrong if it works for you.

When I’m writing a novel, I write ten or twenty pages and then I do a high level outline.  My last novel I used the writing software Scrivener, and listed my outline points as chapters, then fixed that as I wrote.  But my first published novel wasn’t even supposed to be a novel, it was supposed to be a short story.  It has an overarching character arc, and all that jazz, but it wasn’t planned ahead of time.  The structure of the novel grew organically from finding that I wanted to write more.  The structure grew organically from my desire to figure out what happened.  My other writing decision was I didn’t want to do what I thought of as ‘connective pieces’—the boring parts of the novel.  So, I skipped everything I thought was just ‘getting to the next part’ and wrote the next part I wanted to see.  

If you’re asking ‘How Do I Start’ you may not even be at the point to join the argument over which is better, plotting ahead of time or letting the novel take you where it will.  You may not even know if you’re writing a novel or a short story.  

At a certain point, I’d say just start writing.  The way to learn to write is to write.  Chances are your first piece won’t be great for pretty much the same reasons that your first game of tennis, or basketball, or baseball, wasn’t professional level.  Let’s face it, the reason I write stuff is because I want to read certain stories and since they don’t exist, I have to write them.  Even if your story isn’t a great read, you’ll have written it and chances are very good you’ll feel the story more vividly as you write it than anything you’ve ever read that someone else wrote.  

What about characters?

I am a character driven writer, so I would say, as I almost always do, start with character.  Very few books or stories are about a single person who never interacts with another person although some very good stories are, in fact, just about one person, it’s not like you can’t do that, but stories are, at their heart, about things going wrong and whether or not they get fixed or dealt with.  It’s easier to have things go wrong when there are two people because two people are always going to have different things they want and need.  If you’ve ever tried to decide where to go to lunch with someone, you’ve probably done the dance of ‘I don’t want to just say a place because what if they don’t like Chinese food, but they think I want to go there?’ Two people are going to have conflicts whether that’s ‘I don’t really like that kind of food’ or ‘I want the other person to like me so I’m afraid to say the wrong thing.’  (That’s an internal conflict, that last one, but it counts.)

Put a couple of characters into a situation from your idea. You might say, I don’t know yet!  It’s just an idea.  Yeah, having an idea is the easy part. A lot of writers have way more ideas than they will ever be able to write.  I probably have at least one idea (often a bad one) a day that I think, ‘wouldn’t it be interesting to write that.’  I also think, ‘I should exercise more’. I think a lot of things.  But if you want to write, then I say, write.

You can write for yourself. You can write for an audience. You can write for both.  Writing for an audience isn’t better than writing for yourself.  Writing can be cathartic and can be consoling.  It can be personally engaging.  The nice thing is, as hobbies go, it’s cheap.  It’s not like boating, or owning a horse, or even collecting something.  So if you want to start something, I say, just try.

Next week, Jane will talk about how she works with her ideas.

Jane here with a quick message. We've been working on getting a podcast together! Our dream is that this podcast be interactive, kind of like a radio show but not exactly. That means we'd love to hear from you all: send us any questions you'd like us to address in the podcast by filling out this form. We can give you a shoutout or you can remain anonymous. Thanks so much! -J

Art and Craft of Writing

Jane here with a quick message before today's blog post! Maureen and I have been working on getting a podcast together! Our dream is that this podcast be interactive, kind of like a radio show but not exactly. That means we'd love to hear from you all: send us any questions you'd like us to address in the podcast by filling out this form. We can give you a shoutout or you can remain anonymous. Thanks so much! -J

I’m a writer and I’ve been teaching writing in one form or another since the early eighties.  I love technique.  When I started learning to write, I loved workshops.  Who doesn’t love a workshop?  Is there any other time in your life when a group of people will spend a big chunk of time talking about you?  Other than your funeral when all that talk is great for the participants but frankly wasted on the dead.

I love books on writing.  Writing is hard and reading books about writing makes me feel as if I’m working.  I’m not writing, exactly, but I’m reading about it and that should count for something.  

Writing books were fun, insightful, made me think.  But the ones I read mostly talked about prose.  They talked about consistent p.o.v. and not using adverbs.  What they didn’t tell me was how to write a story or a novel.  I had a lot of problems.

  • Finishing something
  • Keeping it from being interesting
  • Making myself write
  • Figuring out how to revise
  • Knowing if it was any good or not

What I wanted was something like a carpentry class where they would announce that we were going to make a table.  We would select wood and learn how to measure and cut, how to do dove joints, how to sand it.  At the end we might have a bunch of tables that looked pretty much alike, but I would understand how to do stuff.  And next time, I could use the techniques to make something more individual.

Jane says: May's newsletter addressed how to get started when you aren't eaxctly sure! Also, Maureen included a very practical, nuts-and-bolts exercise she uses in her classes that will get you launched into writing something with legs. Sign up below if you haven't already!  :)

Jane and I are both teachers, both writers, and we’re both very interested in the process of writing. And we’re interested in how people learn writing.

We’re hoping that we’ve learned some things we can teach and that you can teach us.

What are the things you struggle with? What do you most want to know? What sorts of tools or support do you wish you had? What are your questions about your writing?

Let us know!

The Case for Taking Classes as a Writer

I had a revelation this past year: artists take classes all their lives.

Dancers are always in class. Painters still drop into life drawing sessions. Musicians take masterclasses and attend rehearsals. If you’re an artist, you’re always learning and working on your craft, testing the boundaries of your limits and gently expanding them.

But I think there’s often an expectation that classes for writers are for beginners. That once you achieve a certain level of professionalism, or craft confidence, you simply write on your own. You might have a critique group, or a couple of trusted beta readers, but there is no expectation that writers receive formal instruction after they achieve a certain level.

But I think that might be a mistake, at least for some writers.

This past year, partly to relieve the stress and anxiety of being trapped inside and partly because I missed writing communities so much, I took a bunch of online classes, some pre-recorded but most of them live, run by an instructor. While some classes definitely fell into the category of covering basics I was already confident in, many opened up new avenues for me, prompted story ideas, gave me new tools for storytelling and story generation. I grew more aware of my weaknesses and more able to create a self-study program designed to strengthen my shortcomings.

So that’s why we started The Story Kitchen, so we can examine the ingredients of story and practice our craft in a formal, systematic, but playful and open-ended way, like in cooking! There will be content here that is for beginners, because we all start somewhere. There will also be content here for emerging professional writers, and for experienced writers. Because learning never ends and a formal practice of instruction can be a valuable part of maintaining your creative spark, honing your skills, and opening you up to new explorations you didn’t access in your writing before.

Lots of writers have said this, but it bears repeating: there is no one right way to write. Just like there is no one right way to cook. But searing a cabbage has a very different effect on the vegetable to boiling it, and adding miso has a very different impact on the palate versus adding vinegar. Both great! But different! So we thought, this could be applied to writing, too. Understand the ingredients you’re working with, understand the techniques of handling those ingredients, and then you’ll understand what dishes you’re putting together and how the flavors will blend or contrast, and you’ll become a much more confident chef — er, writer — with a great range. Plus it’s fun to play!

(I just made myself hungry. This is a thing that happens a lot, because I write about food a lot? Literally and metaphorically?)

If this sounds interesting to you, sign up for our newsletter below! Our first one goes out today, and it’s one of the main ways we’ll deliver notes on writing craft, advice, tips, and writing prompts. We also include what I started calling an Unrecipe because they’re about techniques, not recipes, as well as writer quotes, links to books we like, and other fun tidbits. Join us!

Happy writing!

-Jane

Welcome to Story Kitchen

Story Kitchen came about because Maureen and I met while both teaching at a university, and we started getting together to talk about writing, fiction, and teaching. Pretty soon we had a critique group and a couple of weekly co-writing dates. We also had ongoing conversations about craft and books and how to help other writers.

Add to that mix the fact that we both love to cook, and Story Kitchen was born! We conceived of a place that was like getting together with your friends around a kitchen table, sharing stories, tips, techniques, commiserating and celebrating.

In our view, the way we learned to write was similar to the way we cook. Recipes are a good starting place, but what really changed the game for us was learning techniques and how to apply them in different contexts. Learning to handle POV is a technique. Voice is a technique. Literary devices are techniques — and once you understand how they work and what impact they deliver, you can create your own recipes for stories, knowing that each one is going to be different, too.

We’re planning lots of exciting stuff coming out this summer and fall! We’d love it if you’d stay in touch by joining our newsletter, where we’re also going to feature a ton of useful context, including tips and craft essays and a recipe (naturally!). Sign up for our newsletter, and get a free PDF guide, 10 Things to Try When You Feel Stuck.

Happy writing!

-Jane